Christmas Day
Christmas Day
O God, who hast caused this holy night to shine with the illumination of the true Light: Grant us, we beseech thee,that as we have known the mystery of that Light upon earth, so may we also perfectly enjoy him in heaven; where with thee and the Holy Spirit he liveth and reigneth, one God, in glory everlasting. Amen.
Christmas Day
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Scripture citation(s): Hebrews 1:1-12; John 1:1-14
A Sermon by
The Rev. Canon Carl Turner, Rector
on
Hebrews 1:1-12; John 1:1-14
✛
Message in a Bottle
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Walking through the crowds on Fifth Avenue is becoming worthy of being an Olympic Sport. Not because there are thousands of people doing their Christmas shopping, I mean the thousands (and I mean thousands) that seem to have developed an innate radar because they can seemingly walk down the street and cross the road whilst fixed to their mobile phones. It is not only dangerous (I have seen some wonderful collisions and near-misses as two self-absorbed pedestrians walk into each other) but it is also infectious and, I must confess, that sometimes even I have my phone out in front of me as I walk home.
How things have changed! Some months ago I was berating my own children and the way they were constantly on their phones or email accounts or face-time or Face-book accounts and giving them a lecture about how when I was their age there was no such thing as a mobile phone, or a personal computer, or a fax machine, or even an answerphone; Videotape had only just been invented and the TV was switched off in the morning and nighttime because there were no programs being broadcast. “Dad!” they said, “You are so old!”
I wrote this sermon to a background of police sirens and yellow cab horns as the city that never sleeps worked itself up for another Christmas. Yet Isaiah says, “How beautiful upon the mountains are the feet of the messenger who announces peace, who brings good news.”
I was away during the Rockefeller Christmas tree lighting ceremony but I was very glad of my mobile devices then, because I was sent some wonderful images of the choristers at the ceremony and their singing with my hero from the late 70’s when I was a teenager – Sting. Of course, back in the late 70’s, as I remarked earlier, we did not have mobile phones. I remember one of Sting’s great songs written for his band ‘The Police’ in their second album “Message in a Bottle.” Writing about it in the 90’s, Sting said this:
“‘Message in a Bottle’ is a good song. That can move me. I like the idea that while it’s about loneliness and alienation it’s also about finding solace and other people going through the same thing. The guy’s on a desert island and throws a bottle out to sea saying he’s alone and all these millions of bottles come back saying, So what So am I! I like the fact that the whole deal is clinched by the third verse. It makes a journey.”
We live in an age of instant messaging and instant communication and yet there seems to be more loneliness, more misinformation, and more distrust in the world than ever before and here we are in Church on Christmas Day. Some of you have had to put away your mobile devices – perhaps some of you will sneak them under your hymn books as I say this – but why is it that these devices seem to demand so much of our attention that as soon as we awake we have to check them? What message might we miss in reading so many messages on our mobile devices?
As we heard in our epistle reading: “Long ago God spoke to our ancestors in many and various ways by the prophets, but in these last days he has spoken to us by a Son.” God had spoken to his people in so many ways and through so many words but still they did not respond to his love and his message of hope. God longed for his people to return to him and be saved but time and time again they were distracted and unable to recognize his presence in their midst: “He was in the world, and the world came into being through him; yet the world did not know him. He came to what was his own, and his own people did not accept him.”
So, in the fullness of time, God sent his Son into our world so that he could speak to us face to face. “And the Word became flesh and lived among us, and we have seen his glory, the glory as of a father’s only son, full of grace and truth.”
In Jesus we meet God face to face; “He is the reflection of God’s glory and the exact imprint of God’s very being.”
This is not an idea, a good cause or a nice feeling. It is not a moral code, a manifesto or even a set of values. Christmas is the reality of Emmanuel – God with us. What we celebrate in this Church today and in Christian Churches all over the world is the ultimate Face-time; God came among us and gave us, in his son Jesus Christ, a message of hope liberation. He came to a broken world to show people how they could be reconciled not just with one another but with themselves and with the Creator. His life, his death, his Resurrection, his Ascension has changed everything and we wait for him to make all things new.
This message of hope – which began with the prophets – made visible in Jesus Christ and which will be fulfilled at the end of time is not an instant message; it is not a text that can be misunderstood; nor is it an email autocorrected by the device itself – a device that does not have the intelligence to understand the purpose of the message in the first place – no, this message of hope message is timeless and eternal; it is the face of Jesus Christ our Lord. And that message requires a response, which is a change of heart.
